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If this principle is the Authentic Existent and holds
unchanging identity, does not go forth from itself, is untouched
by any process of becoming or, as we have said, by any situation
in place, then it must be always self-gathered, never in
separation, not partly here and partly there, not giving forth
from itself: any such instability would set it in thing after
thing or at least in something other than itself: then it would
no longer be self-gathered; nor would it be immune, for anything
within which it were lodged would affect it; immune, it is not in
anything. If, then, not standing away from itself, not
distributed by part, not taking the slightest change, it is to be
in many things while remaining a self-concentrated entire, there
is some way in which it has multipresence; it is at once
self-enclosed and not so: the only way is to recognise that while
this principle itself is not lodged in anything, all other things
participate in it- all that are apt and in the measure of their
aptitude.
Thus, we either cancel all that we have affirmed and the
principles laid down, and deny the existence of any such Nature,
or, that being impossible, we return to our first position:
The One, numerically identical, undistributed, an unbroken
entire, yet stands remote from nothing that exists by its side;
but it does not, for that, need to pour itself forth: there is no
necessity either that certain portions of it enter into things or
again that, while it remains self-abiding, something produced and
projected from it enter at various points into that other order.
Either would imply something of it remaining there while the
emanant is elsewhere: thus separated from what has gone forth, it
would experience local division. And would those emanants be,
each in itself, whole or part? If part, the One has lost its
nature, that of an entire, as we have already indicated; if
whole, then either the whole is broken up to coincide point for
point with that in which it is become present or we are admitting
that an unbroken identity can be omnipresent.
This is a reasoning, surely, founded on the thing itself and its
essential nature, not introducing anything foreign, anything
belonging to the Other Order.
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